Straight Life - Art Pepper [134]
I was angry and bitter. I would be out hustling, trying to score, I'd be sick, and I'd see people going to work in the morning, all in their nice cars, dressed nice, clean shaven, and clearheaded. I'd see them going to work, and I'd still be standing on the corner waiting for some guy, freezing someplace, in the evening as they were coming home. Here come the same cars back, and they're all smiling and happy. Just the guys in the neighborhood in East L.A. And they go into the market, and they get a check on Friday, man, and they cash that check, and they buy their juice, and they're happy. They're not sick.
I hated them. I was envious of them. I would say, "Look at those chumps! Fuckin' assholes! Lames! Fuckin' rabble! Sheep! Animals! Following the leader! I'm not like that! I'm different! Fuck them! Fuck society!" I'd rave like I used to hear my dad rave about the rabble, the scissor-bills, the kikes, the spicks, the niggers, the tramps and floozies, on and on. Each time I got sick there was more and more fear and hate, knowing I was trapped and I couldn't stop, knowing I was going back to jail. I was full of animosity and so jealous and all I wanted was a lot of money, man, so I could lay up and really drown myself in heroin, saturate myself with it, so I wouldn't feel or see, so I wouldn't want to cry or die. All I wanted was lots of money so I could make myself totally oblivious to everything.
When I was in jail I heard a lot of stories. Guys gather in little groups. You walk down the freeway and look in a cell and there'll be four or five guys talking about shooting this stuff and that stuff. Or someone will come up to you and say, "Hey, Art, take me on a trip." And so you tell about something you did, something that happened to you, the whole thing, you paint a picture. On the street nobody will listen to anyone else for more than a minute, a couple minutes at most, but in jail people will listen, if a guy can talk, for two or three hours straight without ever saying a word. Some are better than others at it and they'll paint some beautiful things, sometimes about women but mostly about different junk they've had, how good it was, and about big scores they've made. They'd pull a robbery and instead of buying a gram or a quarter they'd buy a piece or two or three or four pieces and sell a little bit and lay up and just fix and not have to go out on the street. So now, what I wanted was to find somebody to help me pull an armed robbery. I wanted to go in with a gun, get the money, score, get away from the scene, and cool it.
I went to person after person looking for someone to do it with. Every now and then I'd run into somebody who in the joint had talked about what a big man he was and how many armed robberies he'd pulled-which I'd believed. I'd see him and now it was, "Oh, man, I just got married and my old lady ... " Or, "I just had a kid." Or, "Man, the heat is so hot. It's too hot around here. I'm afraid that the man has got the pad staked out." What it boiled down to was that the guys were just chicken. They were just bullshitting in the joint, and they were really nothing but street hypes running around stealing the easiest things they could find.
I kept looking, and I kept asking Ruben. I told him, "Man, let's do something, or are you just a bullshitter, too?" He finally said, "Okay, but we're not going to do it like a couple of idiots, like these guys that run into these little markets and get shot for twenty or thirty dollars. Let's take our time and look around and find someplace where we can get something worthwhile."
There was a bar in East L.A. All the gangsters and the big dope peddlers hung